On Saturday, at lunch-time, Wallace rushed in for a few minutes to say that he himself had avoided Miss Bretherton all the week, but that things were coming to a crisis.  ‘I’ve just got this note from her,’ he said despairingly, spreading it out before Kendal, who was making a scrappy bachelor meal, with a book on each side of him, at a table littered with papers.

’Could anything be more prettily done?  If you don’t succeed to-morrow, Kendal, I shall have signed the agreement before three days are over!’

It was indeed a charming note.  She asked him to fix any time he chose for an appointment with her and her business manager, and spoke with enthusiasm of the play.  ‘It cannot help being a great success,’ she wrote; ’I feel that I am not worthy of it, but I will do my very best.  The part seems to me, in many respects, as though it had been written for me.  You have never, indeed, I remember, consented in so many words to let me have Elvira.  I thought I should meet you at Mrs. Stuart’s yesterday, and was disappointed.  But I am sure you will not say me nay, and you will see how grateful I shall be for the chance your work will give me.’

‘Yes, that’s done with real delicacy,’ said Kendal.  Not a word of the pecuniary advantages of her offer, though she must know that almost any author would give his eyes just now for such a proposal.  Well, we shall see.  If I can’t make the thing look less attractive to her without rousing her suspicions, and if you can’t screw up your courage to refuse—­why, you must sign the agreement, my dear fellow, and make the best of it; you will find something else to inspire you before long.’

‘It’s most awkward,’ sighed Wallace, as though making up his perplexed mind with difficulty.  ’The great chance is that by Agnes’s account she is very much inclined to regard your opinion as a sort of intellectual standard; she has two or three times talked of remarks of yours as if they had struck her.  Don’t quote me at all, of course.  Do it as impersonally as you can—­’

‘If you give me too many instructions,’ said Kendal, returning the letter with a smile, ’I shall bungle it.  Don’t make me nervous.  I can’t promise you to succeed, and you mustn’t bear me a grudge if I fail.’

’A grudge!  No, I should think not.  By the way, have you heard from Agnes about the trains to-morrow?’

’Yes, Paddington, 10 o’clock, and there is an 8.15 train back from Culham.  Mrs. Stuart says we’re to lunch in Balliol, run down to Nuneham afterwards, and leave the boats there, to be brought back.’

’Yes, we lunch with that friend of ours—­I think you know him—­Herbert Sartoris.  He has been a Balliol don for about a year.  I only trust the weather will be what it is to-day.’